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This was something that was touched on elsewhere, but what if Bernie Sanders had been the Democratic nominee? Would he have won the election?

I am 99% certain he would and he would probably have made just as good a president as Obama in my opinion.

This election wasn't a question of whom people liked more, but who they hated less. A person who had actual supporters? Hah, he'd have won easily.

Yes. Why did Clinton lose? Because she failed at step one of winning elections: secure your base. Excite them, get them to vote, drive them out to the polls, just get them to vote. She failed at that because 1)she's just so goddamned unlikable, even without the 20 years of crap that was thrown at her, simply because she just seemed so FUCKING FAKE and 2) she did very little to get the base to vote fer her. I mean, look at her whole platform. It can basically be summed up as "Gee golly, I know y'all hate me but what about that other guy, am I right?". Look at her most prominent slogan, love trumps hate. It might as well be "I'm not Donald Trump, vote for me!" I think she did not drive the base because she was to focused on step 3, keep the other guy's base at home, and because she took her base for granted. Look at her choices, Tim Kaine for VP? Yeah, what a way to reach out to the progressives who felt cheated by the Primaries, picking an old centrist southern white dude from the senate. And if you where trying to reach out to Hispanic voters you picked the wrong guy in the most insulting way. "Yeah sure, he's white, but he speaks Spanish so all those Hispanics are going to love him, right?" Wrong. And just look at the way she reacted to people from her own party or from liberals who criticized her. In the most dismissive, patronizing, "I dont give a flying fuck what you think" way possible. She took her base for granted, focused to much on the other guy (which made the whole race about him) and that's why she lost.

Sanders would have never alienated his base like that. There where people who where saying "If he wins, he'll alienate the women democrats!" Except Trump, or whoever the likely Republican nominee was (because it wasnt assured he would get the nomination), would have done that even more, A, and B, Obama still got women to turn out for him, so what proof have you of that Sanders would have alienated women? Further more, who did Sanders do really great with? Millennials and white people. If Clinton's numbers with those two groups had even been the same as Obama's, we would be talking about President Elect Clinton. Sanders would have done that.

And about the fundamentalist thing, if borderline fascist arguments did not hurt Trump than I doubt borderline Socialist arguments would have really hurt Sanders.

Yes.

Let's be honest, the cards just kept stacking up more and more against Clinton: she already had people that thought she was scum/a criminal, the emails thing was going to always bite her, supposedly she cheated Bernie out of the primaries which rubbed even more people the wrong way, and with the FBI announcing even more incriminating emails right before election, there was no way for her to actually win.

I was surprised she even won the popular vote, but the results being so close tells you exactly what kind of election it was.  Like Finrod stated, it was an election of who hated who less.  Even some democrats voted against Hilary because they absolutely hated her as a candidate, and some because they were so pissed that she cheated out Bernie.

Bernie, however, didn't have anything working against him.  He had a lot of really good ideas, and he had a lot of support.  It actually blew me away when Clinton beat him in the primaries, because I thought for sure he was going to end up being the winner because of the amount of support that he had.  Had he actually won, I don't think it would have been a close or divided race at all...I'm pretty sure he would have won it outright.

Yes, if Bernie had gotten the nomination he would have easily beaten Trump and he would have excited his base to get out and vote.

What always bothered me the most about the Clinton campaign was how dismissive of people it could be...as I said before at some point, as a Sanders voter during the primary I felt like it was just expected that I was to vote for her because she wasn't Trump. I personally held my nose and voted for her, but I know others who either voted third-party or stayed home because they didn't want to choose between the two. I feel like she could have energized Sanders voters by promising that Bernie and others of his mold would hold important positions in her administration or in Congress. She should have reassured Sanders supporters instead of just demanding their votes on vague promises that she would work for them.

Then today I read in an article that during the campaign Bill Clinton had advocated to the campaign that it do more to reach out to working class white Americans...the very same people who ultimately put the final nail in the coffin of his wife's candidacy. He was apparently dismissed by the campaign as an old politician who refused to accept that the electoral map had changed and at one point was apparently blatantly told that voters in places like West Virginia were never coming back to the party. The fact is when they did their electoral math they came to the conclusion that they could rebuild the Obama coalition of minorities, young people, and the highly educated and not bother with anyone else...and they were wrong.

More than anything, these groups led to her undoing. I don't believe that Sanders would have encountered the same pitfalls...out of the states that decided the general election, Sanders won Wisconsin and Michigan in the primaries, and only narrowly lost Ohio and Pennsylvania. He spoke to the people that Clinton's campaign dismissed and connected with them on the economic issues that they cared most about. I'm not sure that would have led to him outright winning, since I'm sure Republicans would have tried to tarnish his image and drag him down had he been the nominee, but I think he would have made a better showing than Clinton did.

but I know others who either voted third-party or stayed home because they didn't want to choose between the two.

That'd be me.

Personally, I dislike both candidates equally, and I didn't want to vote for the "lesser" of two evils when they're both equally corrupt for differing reasons.

Since third parties usually mean shit in the general elections because it's normally between the two frat houses, I just didn't vote.  I thought about writing in Bernie, but apparently any write-in for Bernie was just being thrown away (literally, not figuratively), so I guess it's good that I didn't.

I voted mostly because I was already off work for my consultation with the oral surgeon and I just happened to have the time to...and it's nice that I can still say I've voted in every Presidential election since I became an adult, too.

Rob dyke sums up the Trump victory perfectly starting at 7:00